


Good or Bad, Happy or Sad

by Orianne (morganya)



Category: Whose Line Is It Anyway? RPF
Genre: M/M, Religious Conflict, Religious Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-06-26
Updated: 2001-06-26
Packaged: 2017-12-26 15:06:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/967376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morganya/pseuds/Orianne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When what you want goes against everything you believe in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good or Bad, Happy or Sad

Our Father, who art in heaven...At this moment heaven seemed very far away, even as Chip sat on the tattered red couch with his head bent in prayer, waiting for Wayne to arrive. The cheap, sticky-feeling, white candles stood unlit at the small table in the center of the room, one on each side of the bottle of Riesling. The wine was still corked---likely it would remain that way. Neither of them were big drinkers. It was mostly for the ambiance, or for the attempt at ambiance. There wasn't much you could do with a hole in the wall.

They had rented it two months ago, when it became obvious that neither of them was about to let go. It was cheap and it was skuzzy and that was the way they wanted it. It made what they were doing less obvious.

When Chip started to think about it, it seemed inevitable that he would have wound up with Wayne. He had clicked with Wayne better than  
anyone on the show. It was easier for Chip to find a common bond with Wayne than with Ryan or Colin or even Brad---Wayne was the only one who he could talk about religion with, and who would understand.

It started innocently enough. Chip would bring his family over to Wayne's house for dinner, or Wayne and his wife would join them. They watched sports together. Wayne gradually persuaded Chip to share in his video game addiction, and they had marathon sessions of video car racing that started on Saturday mornings and would usually stretch into late evening or early Sunday morning, whereupon Wayne would say, "Wow, we've got to get to church in five hours," and Chip would hobble out to his car, his legs stiff and his thumbs swollen and aching.

He could still remember the exact date it turned into something other than friendship. It was on one of the endless Saturday video game sessions, where Chip had won the last game (as a fluke, he had to admit).

"You so cheated on that last one." Wayne said.

"Don't be a sore loser," Chip said, stretching, luxuriating in the triumph. "I guess I'm just better than you at this."

Wayne grinned. "Don't pull that `the student has become the master' stuff on me. It's a cheap ploy."

"So you're still better than me?"

"Yeah!" Wayne slapped his shoulder playfully. "Didn't you already know that?"

Chip slapped his shoulder back. His voice took on a sportscaster's dramatic tones. "Wayne's true colors are showing, ladies and gentlemen. On the outside, fun-loving guy. In reality, sore loser."

"You know I can't let you say that without a fight."

"Bring it *on,* baby," Chip said, as Wayne lunged at him.

They wrestled clumsily, their muscles stiff from sitting on the floor for so long. Wayne was younger and more limber than he was; he recovered faster, and soon Chip was pinned beneath his body, skin to skin, Wayne smelling of sandalwood. Chip raised his eyes to Wayne's, baring his throat. "What're you going to do now?" he asked. His voice was husky.

"This is scary," Wayne said softly, and kissed him.

It was a fast kiss, a quick, closed-mouth kiss, but Chip felt himself vibrating like a tuning fork. They broke apart and retreated to separate corners of the room, staring at each other.

"What happened?" Wayne said in a small voice.

"I don't know." Chip's legs felt strange. "Maybe, if we don't talk about it, it'll go away."

Wayne said nothing. Chip left without a word, going back to his house, where his wife would be just finishing dinner.

He spoke to Wayne at work the next week. Or tried to speak. What started as a conversation turned into sex. And three months later, Chip was sitting with his head bent, praying, trying to make sense of what was going on.

Hallowed be thy name...He still wasn't sure how hallowed this whole occasion was. Even though he told himself, _God doesn't care who you  
sleep with_, thirty years of sermons from in and out of church told him otherwise. He still remembered a phone conversation with his  
mother a few years ago, when Matthew Shepard was murdered. His mother had clucked her tongue and said, "Of course, it's terrible, dying so  
young, but well, you do have to consider the lifestyle that boy led..." The message was clear: it didn't matter that the kid had been tortured to death, because he was a fag. Chip had hung up the phone with a bitter taste in his mouth.

"How do you do it?" he'd asked Wayne. "How do you get past what you've been told?"

Wayne shrugged, looking at him. "I guess it's easier when you don't think about it."

That was the difference between Wayne and him, Chip had found. Chip had been brought up with the fear of God imprinted on him. His  
parents had made sure that he listened to every word spoken, in church and out of it, and if he had disagreed with anything taught to  
him, it was easier to keep silent. Wayne had been spoiled rotten by his grandmother, and church had been more of a social thing for him,  
rather than a way of life. Even now, Chip suspected, Wayne went to church more because he was used to it than because he really feared  
what would happen to him.

Wayne, Chip thought, didn't think that much about actually being with Chip. He understood that they needed to keep it under wraps, and why,  
but he really didn't care about going against his wife or the church. He wanted Chip, and that was what he was going to have.

Wayne was used to getting exactly what he wanted, when he wanted it. Chip had seen him fight tooth and claw for games, screen time, even  
wardrobe. It was only because Wayne made it clear that it was just business that he didn't come across as an asshole. And Wayne had fought hard to keep Chip from walking away.

"I'm not going to let anything come between us," he'd said, a few weeks after they'd rented the apartment. "Who cares what everyone  
else thinks?"

It had almost made sense, until Chip said, "Okay then. Let's go out. Let's go to Spago or Morton's or whatever and I'll sit with you by  
the door holding your hand. Come on. I'm hungry." And then he'd stood by the door, watching the fear forming in Wayne's dark eyes.

"Guess I called your bluff." Chip said.

Wayne had turned away. For all his bravado, he knew how dangerous it was for them to walk out on the street together, and Chip knew he knew. They both had played the outcomes out in their heads. Their wives would leave. Chip might lose contact with his children. It would become harder and harder to find work, and work, or more correctly, `making it,' was so important to Wayne that he rarely talked of anything else. And church was out of the question. They would both be rendered pariahs in the community.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done...He wasn't sure whose will this was. It seemed to be almost outside of him. It went beyond just having things in common with Wayne. It was something that had begun the first time he had met Wayne, and the first time that he had sung with Wayne. Because standing next to him, their voices curling together, had stirred feelings in Chip that he thought he'd buried long ago. "Find a nice girl and get married," the minister had told him, and because he was eighteen years old and scared out of his mind, he'd listened. He was still in college, overwhelmed by freedom, and what had been clandestine desires for the boys he'd seen in classes was beginning to bloom. Terrified he was going to hell, he'd gone to church, asking, "Does God really care if you're gay?" And apparently the answer was yes.

On earth as it is in heaven...Heaven had no place for gays, the minister had told him, not in so many words. "Fight your urges," the minister had said. "God will forgive you." So it was a relief to fall in love with his wife and to marry her, to have children with her. He still loved her now. But it felt more like being best friends. With Wayne it was different.

Give us this day our daily bread...The routine was simple. Chip would go to the apartment, bringing candles and wine and music, Wayne would show up later with either Thai or Chinese or fried chicken or burgers. It was something they did whenever there was a free moment, where they could escape their real lives and come here. He couldn't explain how, but coming here, to this ugly apartment in East Hollywood, felt going into like a sanctuary, a place where he could  
be with the person he loved. Except the world outside kept threatening to break in, and Chip still couldn't resist praying for  
an answer that he wasn't sure would ever come.

As we forgive those who have trespassed against us...Who would forgive him if he did come out? His parents would disown him. It would be bad enough that he was one of *those* people, but the fact that the person he had damned his soul with was a black man would be even worse. His family wasn't openly racist. Overt racism wasn't proper. But his father had raised his eyebrows disapprovingly when he'd watched his eldest son singing with a black man on TV, and his mother had asked anxiously, "Are you sure it's all right, dear? He looks a little...rough, if you know what I mean." Rough was his mother's term for black. And Chip had sighed and thought of all the things that he could have said, but he didn't. And the fact that he was content to pretend he agreed with the things they said and did, to let his family go on thinking that he was someone completely different from who he really was made him feel sick, but he couldn't,  
even at his age, bring himself to say the truth. Because he knew that his family and his friends and his church, as messed up as they were,  
loved the person he pretended to be. He wasn't sure if he would still be loved if he was someone different.

And deliver us from evil...Evil? Chip thought. Everything he'd been taught told him what he was doing was evil. There was no faster way to go to hell. But maybe that was something he'd have to live with.

He suddenly became aware of the radio playing. It was Al Green, "Let's Stay Together." The sad, hopeful, soulful voice filled  
the tiny apartment. Chip stood from the couch, pushing the outside world away one more time. He began to dance, by himself, singing  
along softly with the radio. He could hear Wayne's footsteps on the stairs.

For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory...He pushed the bag of Chinese food from Wayne's hands, slipped his arm around Wayne's back, pulling him into the dance. And as they moved together, he found himself wishing that this could be it, that they could remain here. Forever and ever. Amen.


End file.
